blood must have blood
by flowermasters
Summary: Clarke is damned, saved, and damned again. Vampire AU.


A/N: I got an ask on Tumblr for a 3-sentence fic meme requesting a Bellarke vampire AU, and the plot bunny bit me and wouldn't let go.

Warnings for: vampire AU, angst, blood, mild violence, pre-Bellarke.

* * *

 _Bram Stoker's Dracula_ was a film preserved on the Ark, so most of Clarke's people have seen it at least once. Options for entertainment are pretty limited since humanity had a matter of weeks to save cultural artifacts dating back hundreds, even thousands, of years. The only other person Clarke knows that has read the actual novel, though, is Wells and – well, he can't help her now.

These thoughts are oddly mundane, given the situation at hand. The grounder crouching above her is still draining her of blood – _exsanguination_ , Clarke thinks, one of her mother's words – but Clarke has no more strength left in her to fight him off. The initial bite had been painful, two overlong canines piercing her carotid with the ease of someone biting into a fruit, and then some kind of pleasant sleepiness had come over her, and she hadn't been able to remember the need to fight at all, even though she knows, intrinsically, that death is coming.

"Please," she tries to say, but even her voice fails her. Ironically, he seems to be finished anyways, and he pulls his fangs from her and lets her slump to lie on the forest floor. He towers over her, and although the cave is lit only by firelight, she recognizes that he has black pits instead of eyes, black pits that swallow her up like the darkness of space and then –

The next several days pass in fits. Clarke wakes up in a hole with dirt under her nails, not sure of how she got in it or how she got out. She feels feverish and weak, but when she tries to swallow some berries she'd found in the woods days before, her body rejects them entirely, leaving her gagging and sick. She craves something salty and warm, and the longer she goes without it, the weaker she gets. She is dying – again.

On the fifth day after – what? Her death? Her rebirth? – salvation comes in the form of footsteps outside the cave. Oddly enough, she can hear a heartbeat. It's strong and steady, and her mouth goes so utterly dry at the sound that when she cries out, it's just a ragged gasp of, "Help me!"

The heartbeat quickens in surprise, and then the footsteps are closer, the sounds echoing off the cave walls. Looking into the light is painful, but Clarke recognizes him before he recognizes her, and she manages, "Bellamy."

"Clarke?" he says, falling to his knees beside her. She wonders if she looks and smells as bad as she feels. "What's wrong? Are you hurt?"

"Somebody attacked me," she breathes, staring up at him, drinking in the sight of his face. He looks healthy, a bit thinner than she remembers, but his cheeks are rosy with exertion. She's suddenly conscious of the overwhelming dryness of her mouth and lips, the omnipresent need to _taste_ –

"Why are you here?" she asks, trying to distract herself from those thoughts. It doesn't work.

"I've been looking for you for weeks," Bellamy says, just a touch of reproach in his tone, and through the haze of suffering and thirst, Clarke feels a surge of guilt. The feeling had almost been forgotten, but now it's back. "We need you back at camp. Things are falling apart, Clarke. And you need help – when's the last time you had something to eat?"

Aside from the berries, she hasn't eaten a single thing since before the grounder had attacked her. She's had some water in the interim, but it had proven unsatisfactory. "I don't know," she lies. "Bellamy, I can't go back."

"Clarke," he says, giving her that _look_ , the bullheaded one that tells her he knows he's right, even when she doesn't agree. "You look like crap. You're coming back to camp with me."

Clarke makes a face at him, and he takes that for acquiescence. She lets him pull her up, only because she doesn't have the strength to fend him off. "It's not safe out here, Bellamy," she says, swaying. It's important, so incredibly important, that she makes him understand. The one thing she can still do right is keep him alive. "You're not safe out here."

"I'm fine, Clarke," he says, wrapping an arm around her middle to keep her upright. He's practically holding her against his chest, and Clarke hasn't been this close to anybody else except for the grounder in so _long_. Bellamy must see the look of anguish cross her face, because his expression softens slightly. It reminds her of the look on his face when he'd offered her forgiveness all those months ago – forgiveness that she had not been able to bear. "Hey. I've got you."

"I know," Clarke says, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath, trying to calm herself. Doing so is a grave mistake.

Bellamy smells familiar and different all at once – like sweat and man and handmade soap, all familiar scents, but now she can smell even more, from the fabric of his clothes to his hair to the blood thrumming just under his skin – oh. _Blood._

Now that she's finally admitted it to herself, it's all she can think of. _I need it, I need it, I need it._ The old Clarke, champion of levelheadedness and reason, is no more; she is suddenly bloodthirsty and cruel.

Adrenaline surges through her, and Bellamy doesn't have time to do more than grunt in surprise when she shoves him backwards, slamming him against the cave wall. Her mouth is at his throat a split second later, and his skin breaks easily under fangs that have snapped from her gums. " _Clarke_!" he shouts, loud and echoing in the close quarters, but the noise only serves to panic her, make her drink faster.

She feels it when the venom hits him, because he sags slightly, presenting more of his neck to her, as if offering his submission. The idea thrills the monstrous thing that's taken over her, and Clarke keeps drinking, relishing in the taste of him.

It's only moments later, when she's free of thirst for the first time in days that Clarke returns to herself. Horror, muted by shock, rolls over her, and she pulls her mouth away from Bellamy's neck, realizing suddenly that she is somehow supporting his weight. His skin is paler than she's ever seen it and his head is lolling back against the cavern wall as bright, oxygen-rich blood leaks from two identical wounds on his neck.

"Oh my God," Clarke says, bearing Bellamy down to the dirt. "Oh, God, Bellamy, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."

Even as she says the words with her bloodstained mouth, and even as she tries to _force_ his heart to keep beating, Clarke knows that there is no way she can be forgiven for this.


End file.
